The Vaterland Sicherheit Homeland Security Agency has just come up with a brand new idea to protect you.
Choice quote (emphasis added):
In his letter, Soaries pointed out that […] “the federal government has no agency that has the statutory authority to cancel and reschedule a federal election.“
Soaries wants Ridge to ask Congress to pass legislation giving the government such power, Newsweek reported in its latest issue that hits the newsstands on Monday.
Homeland Security Department spokesman Brian Rochrkasse told the magazine the agency is reviewing the matter “to determine what steps need to be taken to secure the election.“
Source: Yahoo News via BoingBoing
So let me get this straight: a member of the current executive branch (whose very election is itself a point of controversy) is considering asking the legislative branch to pass a law, that would in effect put the decision to renew the executive branch into the hands of… the executive branch.
Yea, if that sounds like a lot of executive branch in the same sentence, that’s because it is. Somehow I get the nagging feeling this plan doesn’t go in the overall direction of more Check and Balance.
Just remember people, War on Terrorism is Peace, Slavery is Freedom and who needs a goddamn election anyway?
Look, I’m French, but even I understand the meaning of “reschedule”. Unless I’m completely mistaken (that’s a figure of speech), it’s nowhere near “cancel” or “forbid” or any other pseudo No-Pasaran-Stop-Fascism-fantasy you imply in that post.
Oh and btw, terrorism is war (sorry to be so blunt and drag you out from under your stone), therefore war on terrorism is aimed at restoring and securing peace. Like it or not.
Unless you can come up with a rational and viable alternative of course (no, I’m not losing any sleep on this one).
Maurice, you seem to be greatly missing on the “subtlety” of my comment here.
See, I am not implying anywhere that there was an intent to “cancel” or “forbid” the elections, back when this idea was pushed. First off, it was quite obvious such an idea would never make it through the Supreme Court, if anything…
Second, that’s precisely what I was commenting on: the constitutionality of such an idea…
And to sum things up: there is none. Heard of “check and balance” and the separations of the different branches of power? French constitutional law carries the exact same principle. In fact, it’s at the root of pretty much every democratic constitution out there. Implying that the executive branch should take over a role that traditionally doesn’t belong it (for good reasons) simply is very unconstitutional. Doing it while invoking vague threats of “terrorism” and “state of alert” to justify it, is about the oldest totalitarian (fascist or communist, I am not picking side here) trick in the book…
Oh yea, and by the way, have you by any chance noticed that the “terror alert level” in the US has magically dropped from its perpetual state of panic in the pre-election period, to nary an alert nowadays… Crazy coincidence, huh? I guess seeing W get elected has convinced the bad guys once and for all to stop acting up.
As for your more than dubious assertion that “terrorism is war”, this is way beyond the scope of a debate through this comment section… Just allow me to point a few things:
1) I challenge you to find a single major state that hasn’t experience terrorism in one form or another for any significant period of time…
2) You please tell me how you “restore and secure peace” against terrorism… By reasoning the terrorist and showing them the error of their way? by killing every single last one of them? Huh, I sure hope you got a magic litmus test to detect “evil guys”, ’cause that option might take a while when dealing with countless groupuscules of loosely related people only sharing that common label of “terrorist”…
3) US gov itself has clearly established it does not consider terrorists to be war opponents, as it’s declined to treat the prisoners made in this “war” according to international war treaties (on the ground they were *not* soldiers, but simple criminals)… So I guess if they say so…
I guess the natural conclusion of all this, and if we are to accept your “terrorism is war” statement, the whole world is in a permanent state of war and it is the role of well-meaning government to “restore and secure peace” at all times.
You’ll pardon me if I find that sort of thinking both dangerous and scary.